


The Slowest Art

by bachlava



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Get Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bachlava/pseuds/bachlava
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the inception, Saito offers Dom an ordinary job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Slowest Art

**Author's Note:**

> Beta-read by the very helpful hitlikehammers.
> 
>  
> 
>  _"Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely, on the soul."_  
>  -Ernest Dimnet

  

When he got home, all Dom wanted to do was be near the kids. It was summer anyway, and he cancelled the arrangements for camp. He let them be as angry at him as they wanted to be, about camp or anything else. Sometimes James ran away from him or Phillipa gave him the silent treatment, but he didn’t try to stop either one of them. 

In their own time, they became more willing to approach him, asking questions that Phillipa, at least, might realize would hurt:  _How do I know you’re not going to leave again?_  He promised he wouldn’t, again and again, but only time would make her believe him. Or James:  _Why didn’t you bring Mommy back with you?_

He didn’t have an answer. The coroner’s office was re-opening its files on Mal’s death - quietly, but not silently. His own name was clear in legal terms, but that fact alone brought the prospect of having to explain things that James and Phillipa weren’t ready to hear.  _There was an accident_  was the easiest thing, and probably the best, but he didn’t know how much longer it would hold.

In anticipation of the reckoning, partly, Dom took the kids everywhere they wanted to go and yielded to every demand he could fulfill. Soon they’d have to establish the usual boundaries, as Mal’s parents reminded him a couple of times. But it had been  _so long_  since he’d seen their faces, faces that were so much less  _little_  than he remembered them. So long since they’d jumped on him at four in the morning or put their sticky hands on his clothes. For a little while, he told himself, he could indulge them. 

He focused any spare attention on things that rarely intruded into dreams: bills, household chores, life’s impracticalities. The senses weren’t equally represented in dreams, and he schooled himself to count on the familiarity of smells: his mother-in-law’s piano cleaner, the artificial-strawberry shampoo that Phillia applied too liberally, Cheerios on James’ clothes and hair. 

He spun the top constantly, and he looked for rest.

 

  

It was a month before Saito called on Dom again, at home. That was hardly typical for Japanese business etiquette, but then again, he and Saito weren’t engaged in typical business. Dom found himself feeling an unfamiliar sense of obligation as he watched a dark sedan pull into his driveway. He waited in the hall while a driver opened the rear door for Saito and handed him a large briefcase and a file folder. Saito said a few words to the man, who bowed and drove off. 

Dom greeted him on the front path. The kids had just gone down for their nap; he and Saito could talk in the study. He showed Saito in quietly and let him examine the wood floor - approvingly, Dom thought; rumor said that Saito had withdrawn his affections from Hülya of the intolerable carpet, although it was none of Dom’s business. He offered tea, which Saito accepted. “Your house is charming,” he said, as Dom poured.

He smiled uncomfortably. “Thanks. It’s home.” 

And it was, because it was where he and Mal had decided to raise their children. It was full of memories that they would never share. Every time Dom pulled into the driveway, it was as if he could still see the realtor’s toupee and feel Mal squeeze his hand as she whispered, “This is the one, I know it already.” A storage closet still held a can of yellow paint, now calcified, from the preparation of a nursery for James’ arrival. Dom wondered what James’ terrible twos had been like, or when, in the two years she’d spent in her grande-mère’s sole custody, Phillipa had stopped wetting the bed. Initially she’d outgrown it early, but she’d started to do it again when Mal began falling apart.

He shook himself. Saito was here to talk business. “Are you dreaming normally?” Dom asked him.

“I have begun to have a few small dreams, recently.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“Shall I inquire into your health?”

Dom wished he wouldn’t. Small dreams, at least, were the first step away from the roller coaster of forcing the monoamine neurotransmitters so far out of balance, a first step Dom hadn’t been able to take yet. But Saito probably didn’t want to know all the details of that. “I’m doing well enough,” Dom said.

“And you are halfway convinced that you are dreaming now.”

“How did you know?”

“Because of the way you look at my briefcase,” Saito said. “Your eyes are there every few seconds, as if you wonder what might be inside it. Perhaps an object, but more likely an idea.” Dom swallowed heavily and felt for the top. “I assure you, it is a real briefcase. Spin your top if you like.”

He did, and when it wobbled, a tension whose presence Dom hadn’t realized ebbed from his shoulders. “Do you sleep at all, Mr. Cobb?” asked Saito.

“Not much,” he admitted. “I got so used to sleeping with the chemicals, I don’t want to take any more meds...”

“A wise decision... I trust you will rely on your wisdom in considering an offer that I have for you.”

That would be the business Saito was here to discuss, Dom thought. “If it’s in my old line of work, I’m not interested.”

“It relates to your original talents,” Saito said. “I am looking for an architect.”

“An architect? What for?”

“Primarily some resorts and apartments.”

“In this economy?”

“What time could be better?” Saito smiled. “Buildings are being abandoned everywhere: exurbs, shopping pavilions, office parks. Things are changing. They will not attract new buyers when the economy recovers.”

“So you want to buy them and restructure while everything’s cheap.”

“A good businessman responds to demand, Mr. Cobb. A better one anticipates it.” Saito handed him the file folder. In it were draft sheets that Dom spent a few minutes looking over. 

“Forgive my impertinence,” he said, when he had finished with them, “but this whole endeavor looks like it’s guaranteed to lose money.”

“Of course it is. The company is not relying on a few buildings to make a profit.”

Dom supposed that a  _sogo shosha_  holding company as big as Tonakai Shoji could lose a few billion dollars and still come out in the black, but it didn’t make sense that they’d want to. “I don’t follow.”

“How shall I explain... what is needed are buildings of beauty and function. Ones that suit the very best of the industries of hospitality and property management.”

“Buildings that everyone on the west coast will want to imitate.”

“Precisely. But the cost of fossil energy will continue to rise. If they want to succeed, they will have to find another means.”

“Something like wind or solar?”

“Precisely.” 

“Is it safe to guess that Tonakai Shoji owns about ten percent of the renewables utilities around the Pacific Rim?”

“Not at all, Mr. Cobb. We own nearly twenty-five percent.”

“Well, at least the inception paid off.”

“Very much so.”

Dom looked at the papers again. The whole project didn’t seem like a bad one at all. But then - 

“I haven’t worked on anything since Mal,” he admitted.

“I do not expect your answer today.” Saito closed his briefcase and handed Dom a hotel’s business card. “Leave a message for me here when you have decided. It will be easier than reaching my cell phone.”

Dom pocketed the card. “I’ll think it over.”

“I would be grateful if you did. We have included paperwork for the practicalities, should you find the proposition amenable.”

That was a polite way of saying that there was a contract in order, Dom inferred. That might be a nice gesture, but Saito was moving awfully fast. “You said ‘primarily’ resorts and apartments.” 

“Yes, primarily. I also believe it would also be advisable for Tonakai Shoji to have an in-house architect for international projects.”

“And you want me to be that architect.”

“Your work is far from an unknown quantity, Mr. Cobb. Our company admired it long before we retained any of your services.”

“You mean my less conventional services.”

“Yes,” Saito agreed. “But there is no obligation for you to provide those any further. At most, I might ask your opinion of other contractors. Nothing more... As I said, Mr. Cobb. Consider the offer at your own convenience.”

“Right. I appreciate that.” Dom couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more to all of it, but he wasn’t going to make sense of it on the spot. He’d call Arthur first, talk it over with him. Right now... it was basic courtesy to introduce Saito to the children, he supposed; he could hear them getting up. He showed Saito into the living room and called them: “James! Phillipa! There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

They came without resistance, which was a blessing. They were still in a stage of wanting so much attention from Dom that they were happy to get the negative kind by misbehaving, James especially. It was a challenge to avoid reinforcing the behavior. Dom decided against giving a reprimand when Phillipa crept up behind him, in front of her brother, in a show of shyness that was less spontaneous than it was calculated to displease. Instead, he said, “This is Mr. Saito. I told you about him, remember?”

He felt Phillipa nod against his leg, and then Saito, to Dom’s surprise, crouched down to her level. “You must be Phillipa,” he said. Phillipa nodded again. “And that must be your brother James behind you.”

“James is hiding. You’re not supposed to see him.”

“Phillipa!” Dom warned.

“That must be why I do not see him,” Saito said, keeping his expression serious. He set his briefcase on the coffee table. “I brought him a small gift. It is nothing very interesting, but perhaps you would be so kind as to give it to him, for me?”

“What did you bring - I mean, um, yes.”

“Very good.” He brought out a narrow rectangular object wrapped in a furoshiki, which Phillipa and James, now only half-pretending to hide, had untied before Dom could tell them to wait. James was working on the plastic outer packaging of the Ultimate Bug Finder’s Kit before Dom could even apologize. Saito waved him off. “I know how much James enjoys looking for worms,” he said to Phillipa, who nodded sagely. “Now, what is this?” Phillipa stood on her tiptoes. “Why, it must be a present for you! I nearly forgot.” He brought another bundle out of his briefcase, presenting it to Phillipa with both of his hands. Its knot, too, was quickly untied, to reveal a plush creature, a cutesified fawn. Dom would have thought fawns were sufficiently kawaii as nature made them. “This is Deery-Lou,” Saito explained to Phillipa. “You can learn about him from the card.”

Phillipa scanned the factory enclosure with the intensity of a child showing off new reading skills. “We have the same birthday!” she announced.

“Then you will be very good playmates.”

“And what do we say now?” Dom prompted.

“ _Arigatou, Saito-sama_ ,” Phillipa said, and gave a practiced bow. James muttered something that, Dom hoped, was supposed to be the same thing. He patted them both on the back. “Phillipa, do you think your new deer would like to help you and James look for bugs?”

“Deery-Lou is a fawn, Daddy. And she’s tired, because she just got here all the way from Japan.”

“Well, why don’t you let her nap in your room and then you and James can look for caterpillars.”

“Okay.”

They disappeared with another little bow - this time Phillipa tried to get her brother to do it, without much luck. “I didn’t know you were so good with kids,” Dom said. Saito didn’t have any children by either his ex-wife or, so far as Arthur could determine, any of his mistresses.

Saito only smiled. “Your children are charming... I hope their grandmother will accept a small token of my regards.”

“You didn’t have to - ”

“It is nothing, only a trinket. It is an almost an insult to a woman of such taste.”

“I’m sure she’ll love it,” Dom said, accepting another wrapped bundle and silently offering thanks when the driver’s return interrupted the social ritual of gift disparagement. “Please call me when you reach a decision, Mr. Cobb,” Saito said. “And feel at liberty to contact me with any questions.”

“Thank you. I will.” He watched the sedan depart and then went back inside to call Arthur. Arthur would help get his head clear, at any rate.

 

  

Dom was still thinking it over that night, when he ran into his mother-in-law arranging the sheet music for the children’s practice. “Claudine. I didn’t know you were still up.”

“It is only ten thirty. And you are always the first one awake in the morning.”

He couldn’t argue with that. “Let me take a quick shower, and then we can talk.” He was just off a long, hard workout, one of the few things that helped him get to sleep. He didn’t think it would work tonight, though, and ten minutes later, he was serving Claudine decaffeinated coffee. “The lacquer box that your friend sent is quite lovely,” she said.

“I’ll tell Mr. Saito you like it.”

“Thank you.”

“He offered me a job, as an architect.”

“Did he now.” Claudine pursed her lips, a signal that she was thinking and didn’t want her thoughts interrupted. “I think that you should take it,” she said, after a minute.

“So did Arthur.”

“That young man has a clear head.”

“Yes, he does... What are your reasons?”

“Idleness doesn’t suit you, Dominic.”

“Taking care of the kids is hardly idle.”

“They do not need two people at home full-time, and I am not going anywhere. Perhaps if a house quite nearby is put on the market, you can buy it for me. But I will not leave Mal’s children without even their grandmother.”

“I never thought you would.” Dom felt himself getting teary, and he blinked furiously. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be - ”

“I am not my husband, Dominic. I do not say that you have no right to mourn her.” Unspoken were the words  _That does not mean I am not angry with you._  

There was a few moments’ silence, and then Claudine said, “You know, I made a great effort to remain friends with Miles for Mal’s sake, when we separated. I should have divorced him for running away into his dream world.”

Dom didn’t say anything. Mal’s parents had orbited each other, more closely or more distantly, through all the years he’d known them. He couldn’t imagine them any other way.

“I should have tried to start over, somewhere far away. We could have gone to Montréal, for example. Miles would have been too lost to know his daughter if we had not been right there, in the same city.”

“I guess he would’ve been.”

“There is nothing to be guessed. She would never have followed down that path. And I will not simply trust that you will not fall back into it as well.” She sipped her coffee. “ _Appèles ton avocat_ , Dominic. Have your attorney look over the contract. And if he says it is all right, you should take the job.” She finished the drink and went to bed without wishing him a good night.

 

  

It was in mind of that conversation that Dom found himself, two days later, in Los Angeles proper, in the lobby of the Myoe. He was professionally familiar with the place: a luxury facility by any standard, too posh to be flashy. The design and decor were minimalist, pseudo-East Asian-inspired in a way that was typical of architects with insufficient knowledge of East Asian architecture. It had a stellar reputation in terms of service, but Dom had always disliked the building for being pretentious, derivative. Mal used to throw in  _orientalist_ , although in Dom’s opinion, everything was too subtle for the accusation to stick. And the design team had been willing to sacrifice an air of authenticity for the sake of high ceilings, higher than were really warranted.

The pool, though. The pool was glorious, large and immaculate, with the main swimming area set slightly off-center to harmonize the wading pool and sauna to the side. That was the one thing Mal had approved of about this place. The two of them had loved to go swimming together, and Mal’s favorite thing in the world had been waking up early enough to have a private swim as the sun rose. They should have come here at least once despite the architecture, he decided. He should have watched her swim perfect, near-silent laps in that glorious pool without another care in the world.

“Mr. Cobb?” a bellman said.

Dom shook himself. “Yes.”

“Mr. Saito will see you now.”

Dom followed the bellman into the elevator with an unaccountable feeling of anxiety. Well, a strange feeling, anyway; it wasn’t unaccountable. It had been a long time since he’d taken a job as just an architect, and he’d never taken one entirely on his own, much less an international contract. He wished Mal were there to reassure him, to charm Saito, to offer ideas beyond what Dom could imagine. But he went, alone, into a business suite where Saito sat at the far end of a long table, a few subordinates seated around him. Dom got through the preliminary greetings without having anyone indicate that he was screwing up too badly, which he hoped was a good sign. Saito invited him to sit. “Have you considered our proposal, Mr. Cobb?” he asked.

“I have. Thank you,” he added, taking a glass of water that one of Saito’s juniors offered him, unbidden.

“And have you reached a decision?”

“I have. I would be grateful to accept your offer, sir.”

There was a round of congratulations, and Dom found himself wishing for Arthur. He had a magic touch with these kinds of business situations, one that transcended his more limited Japanese. But Dom couldn’t regret his decision to avoid disturbing the normal schedule that Arthur was trying to establish for himself. Instead, he bandied back thanks and hoped his smile didn’t waver. 

Saito brought it all to a conclusion eventually, with a small gesture of his hand. “I am prepared to sign the contract today,” he said, “unless there are terms you wish to negotiate.”

“No, the provisions are more than generous.” They were a little bit too generous, actually; it was the one thing that still gave him pause. “The only details that need to be resolved are so small that I hesitate to bring them up.”

Saito met Dom’s glance and then looked around the table. “Perhaps you gentlemen would like to monitor the progress of the New York market.”

There was a soft chorus of  _Hai, Saito-sama_ , and Saito’s colleagues filed out of the room. Dom felt a rush of déjà-vu, disoriented at the lack of wine and  _rimpa_  screens. He bit his lip and concentrated on the scent of Saito’s cologne, which was noticeable with only the two of them present. It was a clean, subtle scent, not ostentatiously masculine like many North American ones. 

“What are your questions, Mr. Cobb?” Saito asked.

He blinked quickly and cleared his throat. “The provisions in the contract are very specific.”

“I hoped that they would suit your needs.”

“Thank you. They do, very much. But I need to know if this job would even exist if my first line of work were - accounting, say, instead of architecture.”

“You want to know whether I have created this job as a pretense to retain your services.” Dom didn’t answer. “Our company has owned the properties in question for several months.”

“I know that. I saw the titles.”

“The venture is a sound one by every financial consideration. As is the prospect of an architect for the firm.” Saito templed his fingers. “The contract for the position was written in consideration of your acceptance. But if you could not be persuaded by any means - then, yes, we would begin to look for another architect. Does this answer your question?”

“It answers one of them.”

“What is the other?”

This was where he should be careful, where he needed Arthur the most. “Given the tasks and requirements that you’ve specified, the compensation you’re offering is... more than I expected.”

“Tonakai Shoji is a generous employer.”

“Of course.” Dom wasn’t about to ask how much the company relied on its homeland employees to provide - what was the term? -  _service overtime_. “Nonetheless, it’s above any rate on the market. And that’s a polite understatement.”

“I am familiar with the terms. I am also familiar with your work, and with the company’s situation. The arrangement is entirely suitable.” Saito leaned forward. “You have done a great deal for me already, Mr. Cobb. I will not negotiate any arrangement in which I do less for you.”

They stared at each other for a long minute. Dom couldn’t guess what was on Saito’s mind. Finally, he reached for his pen. “I’ll sign the contract.” He scrawled his signature across all three copies and pushed them toward Saito, who inked his seal. 

Instead of applying it, though, he let it rest in his tray. “There is one more matter, Mr. Cobb.”

“What’s that?”

“Under our arrangement, Tonakai Shoji will be supplying you with payment.”

“Yes, obviously.”

“It is not by accident that the terms are those for an independent contractor.”

“That’s normal for an architect.”

“Perhaps so. What I wish to say is this: it is my pleasure to support your work, Mr. Cobb. But I would prefer to do so as your equal.”

“Whatever you want.”

“It is not a matter of whatever I want,” Saito said. “Considering our history, I cannot be your boss.”

Dom turned the words over in his mind.  _Considering our history._  What did that include? A few hours? A few months? A few decades? Instead of asking, Dom said, “I’ll be happy to work under those conditions, Mr. Saito.”

“Very good.” Saito sealed the documents and handed one copy to Dom. “I will look forward to our endeavor.”

 

  

The first job Dom tackled was close to home, making a green resort from the former shopping pavilion of an exurb near Los Padres Forest. It took him a few minutes to adjust to the site when he made his first trip there. He and Mal had both preferred to work within established cities. He felt unsure of himself in the midst of this ghost town that was being left for the chaparral to reclaim.

Once his mind had accepted the new setting, though, things began to fall into place. He envisioned pillars rising from where parking lot lamps now stood, thought about how to hide solar panels. Adobe was too practical to get around using, but that didn’t mean he was locked into Spanish neo-colonial. He filled his camera’s memory card with photographs, and when he got home, he started translating notes into blueprints, a kind of pen-and-ink alchemy that he hadn’t realized he’d missed.

He started to dream a few weeks into the project, just snippets of imagery that didn’t fit into larger narratives. Their brevity frustrated him, and for a long time they didn’t lengthen. Dom knew better than to try and force it, though, and as a distraction, he threw himself into the kids’ back-to-school routines. They weren’t entirely happy about it: they missed their private time with Grandma, and Claudine missed it too. 

Dom didn’t want to spend another night away from home, but he couldn’t really call the shots there. He made overnight trips to sites further out: a condemned apartment complex in San Francisco, a foreclosure-ridden exurb of Seattle. It was on a visit to the Monterey site of a dilapidated resort that he had the first dream. 

It wasn’t much of one, just walking down the hallway of his house. The frames on the wall held paintings, famous ones: a Klee, a Hokusai, a Gauguin. A mountain lion sat at the kitchen threshold, blinking its jewel-bright eyes and flicking its tail. It looked at him - hungry, bored.

He woke up and reached for Mal, who hadn’t been there the last time he dreamt in a hotel bed either. He hugged a pillow to his chest for the sake of holding on to something. It was a long time before he fell back asleep.

The decent thing, really, would have been to tell Claudine about it when he got home. He would tell her eventually, he promised inwardly, only not until there was a pattern. Not until he was sure it was real. Instead, he used it as an occasion to invite Arthur to Phillipa’s riding lesson. For weeks, she’d been begging Dom to come watch her ride, and to let Deery-Lou tag along. His excuse, that bringing Phillipa to lessons was Claudine’s job, was wearing thin. Bringing a stuffed animal to the barn was a bad idea, and he hoped Arthur’s presence would be an adequate substitute. 

So they found themselves standing on the bleachers, with none of the other adults nearby. All of them, full-time moms and underpaid nannies alike, knew who Dom was. Saito’s money and influence couldn’t erase old newspaper headlines. Dom recounted the dream to Arthur, not bothering to keep his voice low. “Has that been the only one?” Arthur asked.

“It’s been the only one I remember - you’re doing great, sweetie,” he added, as Phillipa trotted past.

“So you’re worried that it’ll be the only one, or that it didn’t really happen.” Arthur glanced at him sideways. “You wouldn’t have called me all the way out to tell me you had a dream.”

“No, I wouldn’t have.”

“You know it’s a start, Dom. There’s no way you can just fall back into a normal cycle after one dream.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Just keep working, keep working out. It’s the best thing to do for now.”

“Right.” Dom felt his jaw tense. “So, what do you think it means?” he asked, trying to sound light.

Arthur didn’t smile. “Why don’t you tell me about the mountain lion, Dom?”

“Go to hell.” 

Arthur gave him a hard look. 

“Goddamn it - Arthur, I’m sorry.”

“Are you willing to admit I’m right?”

“I know you are.”

Before he could say more, the riding instructor called the lesson to an end. The gaggle of spectators descended to help pigtailed under-sevens lead their ponies back to the barn. “I feel like they’re all projections, staring at me,” Dom muttered under his breath.

“They’re not... Have you thought about moving?”

“Not really. Once I might’ve tried to get the kids away from it, but these days...”

“Thank God for the internet, right? ...Phillipa, you ride like the queen of the Amazons!”

“Thank you, Uncle Arthur!” Phillipa beamed. “Um, who are the Amazons?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Dom said. “Did you have a good time?”

“I had a really good time! We did a posting trot, and Miss Sarah only had to tell me to change my diagonal twice, and Buttons was really good! Please can you buy him for me, Daddy?”

“I think Buttons belongs to Miss Sarah. Don’t you think he wants to stay with her?”

“I guess so,” Phillipa said sadly. She’d been begging for her own horse lately, and Dom wanted to give in.  _Wait until she’s eight_ , he repeated to himself. If she was still eager for her twice-weekly lessons then, he’d get one for her. By then she’d be able to help with the care at least a little bit, as opposed to creating extra work for the horse-loving teenagers who were happy to handle the chores for minimum wage.

Dom decided that he wasn’t up for negotiating stable etiquette, or for tolerating an immaculately clean barn’s cloying aroma of hay and sawdust. He handed Buttons’ reins off to one of the starry-eyed teenagers and took Phillipa’s hand. “Come on, sweetheart. Uncle Arthur’s been dying to take James and you out for ice cream.”

 

  

Saito came to the house again, on his next trip, to look at the blueprints. He wasn’t an engineer or an architect, but he was a top-notch corporate executive, wanting to stay in the know about everything that bore his company’s name. Dom spent the better part of a Sunday explaining architectural schematics to him, and to himself, after spending so long away from from buildings that might ever exist. He had sketches drawn of a resort, a hotel, two apartment complexes. 

Saito listened to Dom’s explanations with the heavy attention he paid to everything, a focus that didn’t abate when he looked at the sketches for himself. “Did you dream of this building, Mr. Cobb?” Saito asked him, holding up one of the hotel. “Did you build it, in a city by the sea?”

Dom felt his stomach drop. “Not this exact hotel, no.”

“But one that was very much like it?”

“To a layman, they would look alike. The dream was more Edwardian Baroque. Arched pediments and everything. This one’s a lot more restrained, and it’s not based on any particular school.”

“But the essence is the same building.”

“Allowing for the filter of reality?”

“Of course.”

“They could be twins.” He waited, but Saito didn’t say anything. “May I ask you something, Mr. Saito? As a... ”

“You may. As anything you would like.”

“How did it affect you, being down there?”

Saito steepled his fingers briefly, lips pursed. “Perhaps there is a more congenial setting for this conversation. You might prefer to be outdoors.”

They left the study, and Dom led Saito down a bicycle path that had hosted a race in the morning morning. It was empty now, and they seated themselves at an unoccupied picnic table, looking out of place in their suits. Dom thought of the mountain lion that lurked in his dreams. “I know that I’m asking a lot of you,” he said.

“But I think you are not asking too much... Do you wonder about the experience, or simply why it was - unlike yours?”

Dom wanted to answer immediately, but he found that he couldn’t. He spent a few minutes looking at a point in the distance where he knew the lighthouse to be, although he was too far away to see it. Mal’s totem felt light in his pocket. “I only expected to wonder why it was different,” he admitted. “But I can’t. I can’t wonder only that anymore.”

Saito took his own few minutes’ silence, gaze fixed on the same point. “It was very much like any dream. For a long time I carried out... a shadow of my business. Sometimes I had a second’s awareness that it was not right to make a decision I had never considered, or to conclude a business agreement with a stranger. But it did not cause me great concern. I was drifting on the sea of a floating world.

“At some times, though, I was troubled. In the place that I had made, someone was always hiding, out of view. For days or for years I could forget the situation entirely, but suddenly one corner of my mind would feel...”

“The presence of something?”

“An absence. Every time it came into my mind, I knew that I must remember what was gone. For weeks or months I had no peace, until I forgot once more... And after fifty years, or sixty, my guards found you on the beach.”

 _What is the most resilient parasite?_  “Were you really...” 

“Alone, and filled with regrets?”

“Yes.”

“I had many regrets, and few accomplishments besides my wealth.”

“And if I asked you to name them, to name all of those things - ”

“Then what I could say would mean very little.” Saito saw his confusion, maybe. “I regretted remaining distant from the people around me. But stories of great loss - if there were any, I cannot remember them.”

“So it didn’t stay with you.”

“But it did. I have never felt like the same man I was before it happened.”

“How so? What is it that’s changed?”

“That is the difficulty, Mr. Cobb. When I seek words for it, I do not succeed. It is like trying to remember a dream the moment after it has slipped from my memory.”

They sat, silent again, for what seemed like a long time. After a while, Dom got up and stood, again staring at the same distant point. Closer at hand were things more certainly undreamt, smelled as well as seen: the heavy, sweet scent of white firs and blooming dogwoods; Saito and the trace his cologne.

 

  

Over the next week, Dom spent every moment that he wasn’t interacting with the kids reworking the hotel. The original element he’d been least sure of, the rustication, was the first to go. He demolished imaginary decorative columns next, substituting functional ones in different places. And extensive stone was unrealistic given the location. There was no reason in the world that concrete with a high build quality had to look bad.

The resulting blueprint was entirely different from its predecessor, although Dom liked to think that it was somehow related to the original idea. It was nothing fashionable, more consonant with Soft Portuguese than anything else, but that meant that it ran less of a risk of looking faddish a decade after its construction. The practical elements would be straightforward. Aesthetic details might be the biggest challenge: the style didn’t lend itself to great flights of fancy, but there were certain elements that wouldn’t transplant well from midcentury Lisbon to a former exurb of Malibu.

There were things in the hallway he traversed in sleep that didn’t transplant to the waking world.

They hadn’t planned for Saito to look at the revised plans before he returned to Japan, but Dom had made enough progress to merit a glance. Monday afternoon found him in Saito’s hotel suite, explaining the plans as they now existed. “None of this is full-fledged yet,” he warned.

“I would not trust a building that was designed in one week.” 

“That’s good thinking.”

Saito smiled faintly, but he looked preoccupied. “There is something that I would like to ask you about, Mr. Cobb,” he said, after an awkward pause.

“What’s that?”

“How did you do it? When you attempted the extraction from my dreams?”

Dom knew his surprise showed. “I thought you knew that already.”

“You presumed that Mr. Nash told me?”

“Yes.”

“He would have. But I preferred to know as little as possible, so that I would not make you suspicious by changing my behavior.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Saito, I would imagine you can infer the details of it for yourself.”

“I believe that I can. But I would like to hear them from you.”

Dom didn’t want to honor the request, but he was in no position not to. “We had to rely on Cobol’s information for the setup,” he admitted. “That was a problem, but Arthur would be too conspicuous in Tokyo. We did it at the end of the fiscal year, so a pack of  _gaijin_  in suits wouldn’t stand out.” But they had stood out, or at least Dom felt that way, as if every eye in Tokyo was on them. He’d been to Japan a dozen times without ever being so conscious of being a foreigner. “Since we grabbed you early on Saturday, you just looked like one more businessman who’d gotten plastered.” 

“A wise consideration.”

That wasn’t a compliment that warranted thanks. “They set us up with some yakuza  _shatei_  to inject a sedative and get you on the train.” The man had worn the too-conservative clothing of a gangster with aspirations of respectability, not looking quite enough like a salaryman helping his boss after a night out. The man had struggled to get Saito into the compartment; Saito was the tallest Japanese Dom knew, and it was well-toned muscle that let him carry his suits so well. “You went out like a light. I’d hoped you wouldn’t be wearing a full suit, so that I could get the line in your calf. But there wasn’t enough space, and we had to put it in your wrist.”

“I found the puncture.”

“I was afraid you would, but there weren’t any alternatives.” Dom had been grateful, then, for Saito’s keeping himself fit: it made the vein easy to trace. “They say people look more innocent when they sleep, younger, but that’s never how it happens with extraction.”

“No?”

“No, the subject just looks frozen. They’re never entirely relaxed because some preconscious part of them knows that their dreams are being invaded. The posture is more controlled than it is in normal sleep, and the breathing is deeper.”

“You have observed your subjects?”

“And my partners.” That sounded defensive, weak. “The subjects too,” he admitted. “Ideally you shouldn’t induce REM until you’re sure the sedative’s working right, but we didn’t have that luxury. I wasn’t prepared for the audition you gave us.”

“Of course you were not. That would have defeated its purpose.”

“When the dream collapsed, you came out of REM sleep before we could even pull the needle. I got off right after that, at Kyoto. I don’t know when you woke up.”

“As the train approached Hiroshima. I had your youngest yakuza friend to assist me.”

“Tadashi.”

“He glimpsed at me as I woke up. It was careless of him, but then, he is a boy of sixteen.”

“Just sixteen,” Dom repeated. There wasn’t anything else he could say. He still wondered if he should have seen the danger coming. At the very least, he should have watched Nash more closely instead of allowing his own troubles to distract him.

Saito interrupted his thoughts. “Do you dream about this building, Mr. Cobb?”

“I don’t dream about anything as complex as a building. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a hallway, or a blueprint, but there’s no context for it.” The emergence of cohesive, immobile structures from the raw materials of metal and wood was no longer a given concept and didn’t reside in Dom’s subconscious. It bothered him that he couldn’t pinpoint when that capacity, which he’d had since adolescence, had become something that his mind no longer needed to maintain. He’d been spinning his top more often recently.

He didn’t have any urge to do so, somehow, as Saito leaned forward, encroaching on his space. The top was in his pocket, weighted to wobble. Saito touched his fingertips to Dom’s cheek, and Dom kept his eyes opened as their lips brushed. Saito drew back to search Dom’s face, not for permission, but for confirmation of an idea, of a plan, that it had come time to execute. 

Dom didn’t speak or even nod, but whatever his expression showed - contentment? a lack of surprise? - was what Saito needed to see. He drew Dom closer and kissed him, slow and soft. It didn’t occur to Dom to do anything but accept the sensation and, after a minute, to begin returning the kiss. He had no real sense of how long it continued, only a certain security in it. It wasn’t the most intense make-out he’d had in his life, and it wasn’t the best, but he was satisfied with its being the first kiss he’d had in three years. 

Eventually they reached the point of needing to break off or go further, and Saito broke it off. For a few minutes he pretended to look through the papers, allowing Dom to regain his equilibrium. When he did, he rested a hand on Saito’s knee, eliciting a neat smile. 

Their fingers touched as they went to collect the scattered papers, each taking what he needed. Saito’s hands were big, plain, but not inelegant, and Dom liked the feel of those fingers straightening his tie unnecessarily before he left the room. A parting kiss was more than he could offer, but he squeezed Saito’s hands and said, “Until next time.”

 

  

Phillipa’s birthday wasn’t long after Christmas, which had been the first holiday the kids had celebrated with their father but not Mal. James was too young to remember the difference, but Phillipa had regressed into misbehaving for attention almost nonstop. That left James an unhappy, overstimulated mess, and Dom had spent the school vacation soothing him and battling the urge to shake Phillipa. Before the new year, he’d started to dread her impending birthday.

But she was perfectly well behaved at the family celebration, to the point of agreeing to let James, who had finally mastered “Happy Birthday,” provide the piano accompaniment at the dinner. Dom spent so much of the day playing hide-and-seek with them that didn’t get a chance to talk with Arthur until Claudine sent them out for last-minute party supplies. “So what exactly is a Shirley Temple?” Arthur asked, halfway to the store.

“Good question. I thought you would know, for some reason.”

“Well, I’ve got an iPhone.”

Ten minutes later, Dom found himself standing in aisle four, trying to decide between maraschino cherries with stems and those without. It was difficult to make sense of how there could even exist a market for more than one basic type of them. Apparently there could, though, and he decided that the ones with stems looked better. Of course, they only came in bottles of thirty. “Maybe we should serve these at the kids’ party this weekend,” he said to Arthur, who had returned with grenadine syrup.

“Bubbly pink things for a bunch of six-year-old girls? Yes, you should.”

“Bubbly, pink, and full of sugar.”

“That goes without saying. How many are coming?”

“About eight.” Emily, Jennifer, Sofia, Kimberly, Grace, Mia, Jessica, the other Emily... He didn’t think he was forgetting anyone.

“Her best friends?”

“We invited all the girls in her kindergarten and riding class. Eight yeses, seven nos.”

“Jesus, Dom, even after...”

Even after the county had finished its arduous re-investigation, something that Dom wasn’t allowed to know about until it was nearly complete. He was proud that it had been a clean endeavor, no greased palms or secret communiqués. Of course, that meant it had taken a long time, and he’d spent it wondering what he would have to explain to James and Phillipa in another few years, what would happen to the cloud that hung over their family’s name. It was almost Christmas when the coroner officially ruled it a suicide, an outcome that had done little to quell Dom’s worries.

“Dom?”

He shook himself. “The gossip mill slows down over the holidays. It wasn’t front-page news anymore, either.”

“But you know that...”

“That some people will never believe it? Yes, I know.” He put economy-sized bottles of Sprite and ginger ale into the cart, then replaced them with diet. He didn’t want to see the effects of that much soda sugar on top of what was in the cake. “James’ Tee-ball coach actually said - ” he could hear the man’s words - “‘You must feel vindicated.’”

“ _Vindicated?_ ”

“That was what I said.” Along with a few other things, which necessitated his finding James a new team. He was just glad that Claudine was responsible for piano instruction.

“Can I ask you something, Dom?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“Have you visited Mal yet?”

“No. Claudine’s hinted at wanting us to go, but...” 

But Dom hadn’t been there since the day Mal was buried. The stone was one she would’ve liked well enough. Dom had put up little argument for including “Mal,” although no one had used her legal name since, early in her childhood, her family began summering in England and Maëlys became Molly and then just Moll,  _Mal_. The inscription seemed wrong without it, and the coffin was heavy on Dom’s shoulder, pressing his steps into the ground.

“But you want to go alone,” Arthur supplied.

“At least the first time.” James and Phillipa would want to visit with him someday, maybe someday soon. It was another reason they couldn’t try to start over someplace else, apart from the fact that Dom had already spent too long running away from his problems. Problems that were theirs already, even without their realizing it, and would soon be even more so.

He cleared his throat. “I probably shouldn’t be driving there.”

“I can pick you up once the kids leave for school tomorrow. Morning sessions, right?”

“Eight to noon... Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Dom.”

He swallowed hard. “Mal used to like white roses.”

“I know.”

“On our first date, that’s what they had in the restaurant, and she mentioned how much she liked them.” Dom had remembered that. Valentine’s Day was easy for him. Everyone else in the world wanted red roses, or at least pink ones. The florists could not quickly enough be rid of their white ones, and Dom knew where he could get heavy, fragrant white cabbage roses without fighting for them. “I need to bring something else,” he said.

“You’ll think of something.”

Dom jerked his chin in a nod. “We should probably go home before Claudine starts wondering where we are.”

 

  

February’s work time passed mostly in the poring over of building plans. The city records division was linoleum tiled and lit with fluorescent bulbs, a world away from the libraries of Paris. Dom was grateful when, late in the month, the ringing of his phone cut through the hum of the light bulbs. He shoved aside the blueprints he’d been studying and dashed into the hallway before the attendant’s wrath could fall on him. “Dominic Cobb.”

“Mr. Cobb. I hope I have not called at an inconvenient time.”

“Not at all.”

“I find myself in Los Angeles unexpectedly.”

Dom doubted that. “Unexpectedly?”

“The flight from La Paz to Tokyo stops here to refuel. A storm in the Pacific has prevented us from completing our journey today.”

“I hope you’re not stuck at the airport.”

“Only at an airport hotel. If it would not disturb your work, perhaps we might confer this afternoon.”

“I’ll finish things here and come by. Between that and traffic... let’s say ninety minutes?”

“Very good.”

It only took him an hour to get to the hotel, which was was downmarket for Saito, actually advertising its five stars. There were limits on what was available near the airport, Dom supposed, and the staff at least was competent. Before he’d presented himself, a receptionist with a Japanese flag pin on her lapel said, “Mr. Cobb?”

“Yes. I’m early.”

“Mr. Saito is swimming...  _Chotto omachi kudasai_.” She picked up the desk phone and spoke to someone in a flurry of Japanese too colloquial for Dom’s understanding. “He has just finished swimming. You can meet him in our sauna.” She handed him a pass card.

“Thanks.”

Dom got on an elevator going up instead of down, initially, and managed to get to the pool area just as Saito dismissed a bowing attendant. “Mr. Cobb. It is a pleasure to see you.”

“Likewise. How was the flight?”

“In the future, I will place more trust in my Bolivian associates, and visit them less often.”

“It sounds like you need the hot soak.”

“Very much... Despite the limits of this hotel, at least it possesses a sento.”

To Dom’s surprise, it was more or less a proper sento, down to the attendant handing them each a locker key and pointing to the rules posted in Japanese, English, and Spanish. The men’s vestibule was tiled in imitation of wood and bamboo, which Dom considered as he untied his shoes. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the effect. And he was nervous, absurdly: he’d certainly been to a sento before. But then, Saito wasn’t a stranger, accommodating a foreigner’s sensibilities by conspicuously  _not_  watching him. Dom was glad he hadn’t worn a full suit, and he was grateful for the hiss and mist of the showers.

Saito closed his eyes and stretched as he sank into the warm bath. Dom took a few deep breaths and wished for his totem. Instead, he rolled his head several times, quickly, which produced no result aside from pain in his neck. He castigated himself for indulging doubts in immediate reality. He and Saito had communicated several times since his prior visit, down to having the inevitable, faintly awkward discussion about health and precautions. Dom had never tried to convince himself that their previous meeting had been a dream. 

Dom closed his eyes as well and allowed his mind to wander: to the points of entry in the apartments he was designing, to the prospect of braving spider exhibits at the insectarium for James’ sake, to how he should observe Claudine’s upcoming birthday. Claudine, to whom he had spoken nothing of what was transpiring with Saito, who for the children’s sake would accept anything and for the sake of Mal’s memory would welcome nothing. 

“I told Arthur about this,” he said suddenly.

Saito opened his eyes. “What was his response?”

“He said ‘okay’.”

“‘Okay’?”

“Yes.” There had been a bouquet of magnolia and red lycoris on the front seat and in the air between them, and Arthur took his eyes off the road for a fraction of second to look at Dom as he spoke. There had been no need for questions, for _because_   _no one is like Mal_. 

And, for now, there was no need to say anything more about it. Saito put his arm around Dom’s shoulders, and Dom leaned in to it. “When I was a boy,” Saito said, "we would often visit the Izu Islands. But I have not been there in many years.”

“I know.” 

“Please give Mr. Arthur my compliments for his thoroughness.” 

Dom looked down with a hot rush of guilt and then, after a minute, ventured a hand on Saito’s thigh. He had imagined doing that for months, and he drank in chlorinated air for the sake of establishing reality. “Am I to take it you’re reconsidering your absence?”

“The length of it was not well considered.” Saito fixed his eyes on some indeterminate point, as if searching for words. The ones he found were, “Will you come to Japan this spring, Mr. Cobb?”

Dom turned the prospect over in his mind. “I could visit the Hawaii sites during the kids’ spring break and stop over for a few days."

“I do not wish to create an obligation.”

“No, they’re overdue for a little just-grandma time,” he said; lately Claudine had been the one taking weekends out of town. More quietly, he added, “You can show me the islands.”

 

  

In Hawaii, James and Phillipa built a real sand castle, on a real beach. Dom wasn’t sure he could bear it. But he also couldn’t turn away from watching the messy, untenable thing take shape, alternately delighting the children and frustrating them as, inevitably, it failed to live up to what they had imagined.

“Look at them,” said Claudine. “I had hoped that they would never become interested in the family business.”

Dom didn’t trust himself to say anything pertinent. “You’re sure you don’t want me to cancel Japan? I shouldn’t have asked you to handle them on vacation - ”

“We will all be more relaxed as three, Dominic. One day the children will ask why it upsets you to take them to the beach, but I would prefer that it not be yet.”

Dom wondered what questions Claudine would eventually ask him, and when.

He avoided thinking about it for most of the flight. He would be well hidden in the stream of Japan’s corporate guests, and if he wasn’t, news of the occasional  _nanshoku_  elements in someone else’s love-play would meet with general indifference, even if Saito was the  _someone else_  in question.

Dom wasn’t going to get much sleep flying into daylight. Once the early turbulence had passed, he got up from his seat and took advantage of the essentially empty business cabin to do the entire cycle of exercises that were possible on a plane, and to drink an unfair portion of the plane’s bottled water supply. As he counted reps, he occupied his mind with Hawaiian architecture and the need to bring in an associate better versed in it.

Landing procedures were the polite, well-organized nightmare Dom remembered, very different from his last entry, when he carried false documentation that the yakuza contracting at Cobol’s private airfield didn’t bother to verify. The immigration officer checking his passport declined to check his electronic fingerprint or shunt him aside for a random security interview. He made his connection for the Hachijojima regional airport easily, expecting to be greeted by a junior associate holding a sign with his name. He found Saito instead, albeit with a driver in tow. “Mr. Cobb. I hope that the flight was not unpleasant.”

“No, it was fine, thank you.  _Arigato_ ,” he added, as the driver took his bag. Within half an hour, they were at the site of a traditional inn, or the boutique version of one. It was a full suite that Saito had reserved for them, and by the time they got into it, Dom’s bags had been unpacked for him and a light dinner set out for them in a central room. He recognized the okazu dishes beside the rice as his own favorites. “Please tell me you didn’t order just according to me.”

“What else would I have done?”

“Well, I hope you’re not offended if I can’t finish my half.”

“It will not offend me, Mr. Cobb. I see no use for such formality.”

Dom took his seat with a small feeling of relief. “Do we have plans for tomorrow?”

“The beaches here are lovely, but perhaps some alternative is more advisable for our circumstances. We might prefer to hike.”

“Yes, I’d prefer it.”

“I can still remember my favorite path.” From there, they fell into a sharing of stories of hikes and walks they’d taken over the years. Dom had always been inclined toward the latter, Mal even more so, but it wasn’t a set rule.

When he’d eaten as much nozawana and rice as he cared to, Dom excused himself to call Claudine. Having been assured of his safe arrival, she put James on the line to relate to him, at length, all the unfamiliar insects he’d seen in the past day, Phillipa to detail the beach ride Claudine had organized for her, the Welsh pony she’d seen and fallen in love with.

After the kids hung up, Dom flossed and brushed the remnants of dinner from his mouth, then stepped into the shower, lingering under the hot water. His in-flight calisthenics had spared him a backache, but nothing could prevent the dry, grimy feeling that resulted from a long flight. He drank in the scent, which he couldn’t place, of the hotel’s soap and shampoo. He wrapped himself in a hotel bathrobe and looked for the Hawaiian architecture book he’d brought on the plane. It had been placed on a low table, beside a setting of exactly the kind of  _sake_  he expected to find in a place like this. He nursed a cup as he tried to brush up on everything from  _heiau_  temples to Vladimir Ossipoff. The task was daunting, and eventually he decided to put it aside for the night. He refilled his glass with the best  _sake_  he’d ever tasted and set aside  _Hawaii: An Architectural History_  in favor of the first of the stack of complementary magazines. There was a dense, concise article on Tonakai Shoji’s position in the natural gas market.

“ _The Economist_  is a well-informed publication,” came Saito’s voice, “but they know much less than they could about my company.”

Dom, lying on the futon, was too relaxed to be startled, although Saito had come within ten feet without his knowing it. “That’s exactly what you want, though, isn’t it?” he asked. 

“Of course. But it requires skill to maintain the circumstances. With the  _Wall Street Journal_ , it is easier.”

“How about  _Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun_?”

“It is somewhere between the two.” For a minute, Saito looked off as if into the distance, although his view was of the _fusuma_  wall. “When I was dreaming, I would open a newspaper and find only the poems that every child must learn in school here.”

Dom moved so that Saito could lie beside him on the mattress. He touched his thumbs to Saito’s cheeks, fingers around his ears, and let the silence enfold them for a long time. When he felt the urge to speak, he said, “Tell me.”

Saito moved closer to Dom. “They were in my mind often before I woke up, as if to tell me that something was not right. ‘ _Kaze o itami iwa utsu nami no onore nomi..._ ’”

“‘...crushed on the shore, remembering what once happened.’”

There was nothing either one of them could say. They lay there for another while, Dom still cradling Saito’s head, running his fingers over the ridges behind Saito’s ears. Saito put one arm around Dom’s waist until they lay there half-entangled, kissing with a mellow intensity that increased almost too gradually for Dom to perceive it. He was faintly aware of kissing back with more vigor, of cradling Saito’s head. He wanted to be closer to Saito, and Saito seemed to want to feel every ridge of his mouth. 

When the fierceness of kissing burnt itself out, Saito moved his lips to Dom’s neck, hands on his biceps, so that Dom could only move his hands to Saito’s chest. Dom loosened Saito’s robe and roved the tips of his fingers over nearly-smooth skin and pectoral muscle laid flat against the ribs. Saito’s hands were all over him, chest and back and hips, and he wanted them everywhere. He pinched a nipple, and Saito tilted his head back and groaned. Dom repeated the gesture several times, and then he found himself flipped on his back with Saito looming over him, breathing hard. “ _Onegai shimasu_  - please -”

“Yes.” Dom reached for the belt on Saito’s robe, and his fingers felt clumsy. “I don’t know what -”

“Allow me.”

His robe was gone quickly, and Dom was glad for the feel of lean, hard thighs against his own, for the  _sake_  that let him escape from detailed planning. He watched with an almost-detached excitement as Saito moved his left hand down him, neck to sternum to chest to stomach and then resting at Dom’s pubic hair. He carded it softly, rolling Dom’s balls over and over his right hand. Dom heard a rasping sound that he recognized as his own breathing, which grew fast and shallow as Saito moved the hand to his increasingly attentive cock. Saito gave him a few strokes up and down, swirling a fingertip firmly at the underside juncture of glans and shaft, and brought him nearly to full mast. 

Saito shrugged off his own robe completely, the low light and his faint perspiration giving a sheen to his skin, unmarred by scars or ink and bearing little body hair. He reached into the pocket for a bottle of lubricant that he opened with and poured onto a steady hand, then spread over Dom’s thighs. 

Without conscious intent, Dom arched his hips upward. Saito worked the lube inward to make Dom’s perineum slick, getting Dom ready for something he hadn’t participated in since he was a teenager whose girlfriend wanted to stay a virgin. He didn’t have time to unpack that thought before Saito retrieved a condom - to avoid chafing, Dom supposed vaguely - one of the thin Japanese brands that made it feel like you were wearing absolutely nothing. He used to stock up whenever he went to Japan. Mal would always take the packet from between his fingers and put the condom on for him. 

He wasn’t going to think of Mal right now. He  _was not_. He almost offered her usual courtesy to Saito, but he’d never put a condom on anyone but himself, and Saito wasn’t circumcised. Dom stared as Saito took the head of his cock between his thumb and pointer and peeled back the foreskin. There was a gasp that Dom recognized as his own, and Saito chuckled almost inaudibly and stroked himself through applying the condom. 

Dom didn’t have time to think before Saito was arranging himself on top of him. He just parted his thighs narrowly and allowed Saito to slip his cock between them before squeezing them in, making the grip tight. Dom jumped at the wet friction of a thrust over the back of his scrotum, but he kept his grip on Saito’s upper arms. “Come on. Keep going.”

He complied, and Dom felt a jolt of pleasure as Saito’s erection rubbed some hitherto neglected bundle of perineal nerves. He tensed the muscles in his thighs, and the sensation intensified enough that he had to suppress a moan. Then Saito re-angled his body so that his abdominal muscles moved up and down Dom’s erection with the pumping of his hips, and the breath went ragged in Dom’s chest. Dom clenched and relaxed his adductors in a rhythm, and it felt like Saito was pressing all over him, moving  _all over him_.

Saito’s eyes were closed, and he was biting his lip. Flushed, he was flushed, Dom saw, and over him. Saito was on top of him, and Dom felt like his body was a spiral of nerves with its fulcrum where they touched. A vein in Saito’s forehead bulged, and Dom made his gluteal muscles tense. Saito closed his eyes and moved faster, with less and less precision, until he’d thrown his head back and come. 

Dom gave a whimper of protest as he withdrew. He couldn’t tolerate a break in stimulation, not now, and he was frantic as he took his cock in his hand. “So impatient?” Saito asked. 

Dom nodded, but Saito pushed his hand away from its stroking and retrieved another condom, no more able to read Dom’s thoughts than Dom was to speak and say  _Don’t bother, it’s been too long, I’m going to -_. He could only watch, again, as Saito opened the packet, and he almost came as Saito brushed the head of his cock with his fingers, as he jerked the shaft to prevent any softening. 

He arranged himself between Saito’s thighs and  _oh, god_. Saito was lying under him.  _This power._  He began to move - clumsily, he thought, probably clumsily, but he didn’t care, couldn’t care. He wasn’t too clumsy to keep Saito from moving in a rhythm with him, from following his lead. Saito’s thighs were working him in ways he couldn’t have imagined. He thought he’d die if he didn’t come, felt like he was going to burst, and then he wasn’t aware of anything - and then he was coming, gasping noisily and slumping into Saito’s chest.

 

  

He woke up in mid-fall, going backwards through the air. There was no telling how the fall had started: it had just been, and then Dom was - he was on a futon mattress, soft and thick. Awake. He wasn’t sure where he was, and he reached frantically for his totem. When he found it, he turned on the light and spun the top twice, both times watching it until it not only wobbled, but fell. Only then did he try to catch his breath.

When his head cleared, he realized, with a languid surprise, that he was under the sheets. He was alone there, feeling as if the sheets were stuck to his naked skin.

Dom didn’t like his chances of getting back to sleep before morning. He rinsed himself off in the shower and tiptoed across the suite in his robe and slippers. Saito lay in his own bed, lost in a natural sleep that Dom had never seen him in.

He was on his left side, hands clutched in front of him and mouth slightly open. There was a stillness about him, the muscle atonia of REM sleep. If Dom looked closely, he could make out, even in the dark, fluttering eyelids and nocturnal tumescence that was sometimes absent, and sometimes hyper-present, during dreams induced by somnacin. His limbs gave little spasms, and saliva glistened on a corner of the pillow.

Light was creeping through the curtains when Saito came awake. Dom expected him to jump to full alertness at the ring of his alarm. Instead, a firmness began to return to his posture before the clock sounded. His breathing deepened and his eyelids fluttered a few times, slowly, before they opened. When they did, Saito spent a few minutes just staring at the ceiling, then turned his head and blinked at the sight of Dom. “Did you stand there all night, Mr. Cobb?”

“No. I woke up at three-thirty, but...”

“But you have woken up by yourself for three years. I did not wish to presume anything.” He turned down the covers, and Dom lay down next to him. “You will not be too warm in your robe?”

“It’s all I’m wearing.”

Saito gave him an indulgent smile. “Mr. Cobb. Surely -”

Dom grinned back and shrugged the robe off. “You’re right. But given the circumstances, you should really call me Dom.”

“Dom,” Saito repeated, as if sounding it out. “If you would prefer it, I will try to change my custom.”

“You don’t have to.” Dom doubted he’d ever think of Saito by anything but that, and he admitted it aloud. 

“Please use the form of address which you prefer,” Saito said. After a moment’s pause, he added, “I must commend you for teaching your children the correct titles. But it would not be an insult if they were less formal.”

That was a polite request to exchange  _Saito-sama_  with  _Ayumu-ojisan_. The kids could manage it, Dom thought. “I should bring them to Japan sometime, when they’re old enough to handle the flight.”

“It will be my honor to host them.”

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate that.” He fitted his body to Saito’s. “I’ll miss this until then. I won’t be able to get to Japan very often.”

“I have considered the advantages of having a regular office in Los Angeles,” Saito said. “I have also considered whether it would impose on an architect to have more frequent visits from his employer.”

“On the contrary. A good architect benefits from communication.”

“I am happy to hear it.”

Dom smiled, but only briefly. “We’ll both have to talk about Limbo. About what happened to us there.”

“I know.”

“And it’ll have to be soon.”

“Yes,” Saito murmured. “We must do this soon.”

“You can’t expect it to be easy. I don’t think I’ve found the words for it yet, any more than you have, but...”

“ _Aishiteru yo_ ,” Saito whispered, letting the sound hang in the air. “These are the only words I can find. Will they do for now, Mr. Cobb?”

Dom nodded. “For now, I think they will.” He rested a hand on Saito’s hip and, to his own surprise, yawned before he could say or do anything else.

“Rest,” Saito whispered. “Rest here.”

“Am I dreaming?”

“Do you believe that you are dreaming?”

It was a question Dom couldn’t answer. Daylight was beginning to fill the room from the east. He knew how he’d gotten here. Making sense of it wasn’t in his grasp, any more than he could grasp the tides of the sea or of his mind. For now he was warm and contented, and he allowed himself some confidence that he and Saito would soon be walking over Hachijojima’s hillsides, far away from anything he had built.

**Author's Note:**

> Image credits (livejournal): spine, ollywol, crownlet, camila12, ohfreckle (2x), llorona, distractiions, pour_rever, deadowls, manderleyicons, joyfulsong, risque_graphics, bella_sol, greenapricot, cunning_croft, distractiions , icondere (2x), manderleyicons, dayspringkiss, llorona, marlenem, (stock), mcrnut (2x), fierce_icons, lastdance_icons, rachelwsz, crownlet, jackstwistdmind, beforethecalm, nyxenart, mcrnut, marlenem, manderleyicons.
> 
>  
> 
>  _Inception_ is all Warner Bros.'; no claim or commerce here.


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